Perspectives on Education with Kalman Hettleman and Erica Green

Kalman Hettleman will be in conversation with New York Times reporter Erica L. Green. They will discuss the education system and what can be done to improve the system.

Kalman R. “Buzzy” Hettleman exposes the educational abuse suffered by tens of millions of struggling learners, including many who are “Mislabeled as Disabled” and dumped into special education. The majority of these students are not disabled in any medical or other clinical sense. Rather, in violation of federal law, they fail to receive proper instruction and fall farther behind, suffering stigma and segregation. Hettleman also shows how teachers are undervalued heroes denied the teaching tools to do the job right and, like students, are victimized by the system. This book is a call to everyone to become enraged, and then engaged in the struggle for reform.

Kalman R. Hettleman is an acclaimed expert and author on special education and struggling learners. He has represented pro bono over 200 students and been instrumental in policy reforms at the local, state and national levels. In 2016-2018, he was a member of the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, charged by the governor and state legislature with recommending comprehensive, statewide K-12 school reform. He has also been Maryland cabinet secretary for social welfare programs, a university professor of social policy, a public interest attorney, Deputy Mayor of Baltimore, and manager of state and local political campaigns. He is the author of the acclaimed book It’s the Classroom, Stupid: A Plan to Save America’s Schoolchildren.

Erica L. Green is a correspondent in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times covering education and education policy.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. 

Re-opening activities are made possible in part by a generous gift from Sandra R. Berman.

Recorded On: Wednesday, November 13, 2019